SHANGHAI

The article traces the image of Shanghai as the whore of the East. Taking Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit’s thoughtprovoking book Occidentalism (2003) as a point of departure, the author explores how Shanghai because of its close relationship to the West, epitomises a Chinese ambiguous relationship between modernity and tradition. Since the beginning of the twentieth century Shanghai has been associated with the promiscuous good-life of the English and French colonial elite. Mao saw Shanghai as the “most Western whore of them all” and by waging war on the city he put an end to the decadent period of Western imperialism. Today Shanghai is an impressive and at the same time uncanny monument of China’s economic growth and a symbol of modernity. The article suggests that imaginings of Shanghai are telling of China’s attempt to develop modernity with Chinese characteristics. Shanghai’s revival as the new face of China being a centre of economic growth and cosmopolitanism has, however, given rise to a new fear of Westernisation. Despite efforts to control the social world including social spaces, changing lifestyles pose new threats to the Communist Party’s wish for monopoly of the definition of social reality. This becomes clear in a controversy over the novel Shanghai Baby, which plays on Shanghai’s previous image as the whore of the East in a modern guise. &nbsp

Den Kinesiske drøm om Harvard

Susanne Bregnbæk: The Chinese Dream of Harvard This article examines “the Chinese dream of Harvard” from the perspective of Chinese parents, the state and students at two elite universities in Beijing. It argues that Harvard University is seen as the ultimate symbol of the kinds of qualities that the current educational reform, known as the education for quality movement wishes to instil in Chinese youth. The introduction of the One Child Policy in 1978 went hand in hand with reopening of higher education and a fetishization of education as the road to familial and societal prosperity. Chinese intellectuals have tended to oscillate between a rejection of Chinese cultural ideas and ideas imported from the West. This has gone hand in hand with an internalization of an Orientalist notion that there is something lacking within the Chinese individual. The May Fourth Movement of 1911 sought to incorporate, among other things, the work of John Dewey and sought to change Chinese society and the Chinese individual. The education for quality movement can be seen as a replaying of some of these themes, this time couched within suzhi terminology – that is an amorphous discourse focused on improving the “quality” of the population. The article presents two case stories of students who suffer from an inability to live up the great expectations of parents and society. The discourse on population quality wishes to reduce the pressure of a competitive educational system focused on testing, which is seen to inhibit the development of people’s full potentials, but because of the mismatch between population size and genuine opportunity, the discourse is experienced as a contradiction in terms. Keywords: China, youth, education reform, One Child Policy, population quality, family.

Martin Holbraad: Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination

Anmeldes af Susanne Bregnbæk &nbsp

The promise of education and the practice of filial duty: a story of inter-generational aporias in contemporary China

Based on ten months of research at an elite university in Beijing (Qinghua University) this article focuses on the conundrums of life for young people in China today. It addresses the paradoxical situation faced by many young people, who are among the lucky few, who have made it to the top of a very competitive educational system yet feel deeply ambivalent about their own futures. Through a detailed ethnographic case story of a particular young woman, Jing Jing and her family history going back several generations, it explores the existential dilemmas imbedded in intergenerational and state citizen relationships in contemporary China. It sees these as linked to but not entirely reducible to China’s historical and political transformations, including the Chinese state’s educational policies focused on improving the “quality” of the population. I argue that Jing Jing faced a double-bind, in the form of two opposing social imperatives, those of “self-sacrifice” and “self-actualization”. In Jing Jing’s case this is accentuated by an inability to reconcile the wish to live up to her moral duty to take care of her mother during her old age with her wish to live out her own dreams of higher education. Drawing on an existential approach to anthropology, the authors seems these as tied to existential aporias, moral dilemmas that admit no resolution and reflect contradictions intrinsic to the human condition. http://dx.doi.org/10.5902/223667257930

Introduktion: Sund aldring og sociale relationer

Vi lever længere og længere. Ifølge Danmarks Statistik er middellevetiden for danskere i 2019 på 81 år (79 år for mænd og 82, 9 år for kvinder) (DST 2019). Det er en fremgang på mere end fire år i danskernes middellevetid siden årtusindeskiftet (ibid.), hvilket vidner om, at livets længde er foranderlig. Hver dag udvikles der nye medicinske teknologier, og velfærdssamfundet byder ind med nye sociale teknologier, der ligeledes søger at forbedre og forlænge livet. Alene derfor er livet som ældre med andre ord ikke, hvad det plejede at være. Faktisk ved vi dårligt nok, hvem vi skal opfatte som ”de ældre”. I en tid hvor aldringslandskaber både i Danmark og globalt er under stærk forandring, hvordan skal vi da anskue aldring – som kronologisk, social, biologisk, fænomenologisk, funktionel eller institutionel aldring (Kertzer and Keith 1984, Beall 1984, Fortes 1984, Kaufman 1987, Katz 2006, Grøn og Olesen 2017)? Mange spørgsmål trænger sig på. Har vi erstattet en entydigt negativ fortælling om aldring som forfald med en entydigt positiv fortælling om sund, aktiv og vellykket aldring? Hvordan influerer det i så fald på forholdet mellem pædagogiske tiltag og pleje og omsorg for ældre

Statens eller familiens børn? Tvang og omsorg i mødet mellem nytilkomne familier og danske daginstitutioner

ResuméNytilkomne familier bliver mødt med mange krav fra den danske velfærdsstat. Et af kravene er, at de skal sende deres 0-6 årige børn i dagtilbud, så forældrene kan gå på sprogskole eller komme i praktik. Artiklen belyser nogle af de dilemmaer, der opstår i forældresamarbejdet i mødet mellem pædagoger og nytilkomne familier. Disse dilemmaer udspringer af den myndighedsrolle som pædagogerne har, samtidig med at de ofte får en tæt relation til forældrene, og har et oprigtigt ønske om at hjælpe både børn og forældre til at kunne navigere rundt i det danske samfund. Artiklen bygger på etnografisk feltarbejde i fire kommuner, og de valgte eksempler viser, hvordan pædagogerne navigerer mellem omsorg og magtudøvelse, og hvordan magtrelationen mellem forældre og pædagoger kan være uklar for forældrene og i nogle tilfælde også for pædagogerne selv. Artiklen giver ikke svar på dilemmaerne, men peger på behovet for en stadig professionel refleksion over de pædagogiske udfordringer i forældresamarbejdet samt over den politiske kontekst, som forældresamarbejde med nytilkomne familier indgår i. AbstractChildren of the state or children of the family? Care and coercion in the encounter between refugee families and Danish day-care institutions. Newly arrived families in Denmark are faced with multiple requirement by the Danish welfare state and it is mandatory that they send their children to Danish day-care institutions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in four day-care institutions in Denmark this article sheds light on some of the dilemmas that arise in the encounter between refuge families and Danish pedagogues. More specifically we focus on the notion “forældresamarbejde” – a term which connotes the widespread idea that parents and institutions must communicate in an intimate way and work together to create the best circumstances for the concerted cultivation of children. Through concrete ethnographic cases we discuss how pedagogues attempt to manage the dilemma between caring for children without disempowering their parents and argue that the pedagogical task requires tact and sensitivity faced with dilemmas that admit no easy resolution since they are inherently contradictory

HIMLEN OVER BEIJING

Undergrundskirker, kinesiske unger og forhandlingen af politiske og eksitenstielle grænse